In code division multiple access (CDMA) wireless systems, an accurate power control is important to effectively utilize frequency resources that are commonly shared by wireless transmit/receive units (WTRUs) and a base station. A system capacity is increased when the power is optimally controlled because the system capacity is highly related with an amount of interference in the system.
In a wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) system, a closed-loop power control is employed for transmit power control. The closed-loop power control is based on signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) measurements. A measured SIR is compared to a reference SIR and a transmit power control command is generated based on the SIR comparison. Therefore, the accuracy of the SIR estimation greatly affects the stability and accuracy of the transmit power control and the system capacity. Conventional statistical variance-based estimators need larger number of pilot symbols to make reasonable SIR estimations, which leads to slow response to channel variations. This is especially true in cases that the transmitted number of pilot symbols is small.